After arriving home from school today and satisfying his belly with a delicious snack, this child of mine asks, "Mom, would you like to learn how to do synthetic division?"
"What is that even? Is it like pretend division?"
"No, I'll teach you."
*heavy sigh*
I know one day I will miss this frequent afternoon 'let me show you what I learned in math' sessions. But I don't speak 'math'. I do know the word division, but then he lost me after that. But my 16 year old wants to spend time with me, talking and showing me stuff...who am I to say 'no' even if I have no clue what he's trying to say?! I am good at nodding in all the right places, trying to look intelligent, asking semi-relevant questions and being very responsive with saying alot of affirming "mmmhhhmmms". This is what moms do.
We sit down to do our first problem together and I ask him if I can take pictures of what we're doing so I can remember it. I received permission. Here goes:
Apparently we start off with a warm-up problem. I don't want you to be confused, this particular problem is just regular polynomial division. Of course you could probably tell by the way he was laying out the problem, but I couldn't.
What I could tell, however, is the answer....you always circle the answer. I know that one.
Here I am messing with my camera because I somehow got distracted from my math tutorial and thought it would be fun to take selfies of how dazed and confused I look as he's explaining mysteries from the upper echelons of math class that I failed to reach.
Here's our next problem. Apparently now we're really diving into the hard stuff. Ahh, but no, synthetic division is supposed to make dividing polynomials that much easier.
See!
Trying to raise one eyebrow in this lovely shot.
Ah haa! Another answer because I see the tell tale circle.
Still working on ..... something. Maybe he's double checking his previous answer.
As you can tell, I kinda zoned out. I was having alot of fun with the selfie thing. I'm so glad Chloe taught me how to do this. But I must confess...selfies are not flattering. At all. I cringe even posting them on here.
Thus ends our math tutorial. Don't worry, there will be more to come. There always are. If not after school, then at the dinner table. If not at the dinner table, then while we're taking a walk together. Math is everywhere. All the time. This is how I embrace it.
